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The City Council is expected to vote Monday on a proposal to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Though the city cannot officially change the holiday since it is a state holiday, this would be a resolution to recognize the day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day for city purposes. Ward 3 Councilor Heather Shand, who sponsored the Aug. 9 order...

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School board officials were criticized on Tuesday after a motion to reinstate Columbus Day on the school calendar did not pass. More than 20 residents and local Italian American activists attended the Rockaway Township Board of Education meeting and spoke in support of the motion. Board members renamed the day Indigenous Peoples' Day after a board...

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Poor Lawrence Brignolia is rolling over in his grave. The Italian-American won the Boston Marathon in 1899 with a time of 2:54:38. In 2000, he was elected to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. That's quite an honor for a horse shoeing son of Italian immigrants, but there is no honor for Italian Americans at this year's Boston Marath...

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It’s been 529 years since Christopher Columbus sailed the “ocean blue.” In all that time, this Columbus Day is probably the most important to the legacy of the embattled explorer. Monuments are in mothballs, school curricula are being “corrected” and holidays are being challenged across the country, and especially here in Chicago. That’s why this y...

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Raise the trumpets and beat the drums. The 39th annual Brooklyn Columbus Parade, which is sponsored by the Federation of Italian American Organizations, will take place on Saturday, Oct. 9. It will likely be on a smaller scale due to the lingering effects of the coronavirus and the difficulty securing participation by some schools and bands. This y...

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July 25 was the one-year-and-one-day anniversary of the removal of the Christopher Columbus statues by the City of Chicago. It was also the day Chicago’s Italian-American community turned out in droves to show unity and strength at the JCCIA’s “Pack the Park Italian Unity Day Rally.” “After all that has been going on with the Columbus issue and the...

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Sailors in Christopher Columbus’s home town knew about North America more than a century before the explorer discovered the continent, Italian researchers have claimed. An account by Genoan sailors of a verdant land beyond Greenland “where giants live” has been found in a history of the world written around 1340 by an Italian friar — 152 years befo...

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Knights of Columbus Villa Marie Council 6342 of Absecon and Galloway Township will sponsor its 10th annual Italian Festival on Saturday, Sept. 25 at the Historic Smithville Village Green in Galloway township. The rain date is Sunday, Sept. 26. The event will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be live Italian music at the main entrance provided b...

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Last year, Mayor Ben Walsh announced changes were coming to Columbus Circle with some criticism and some support. On Wednesday, Walsh talked about the future of the statue and the circle, saying the Heritage Park project is still in the works, and they're still collecting community input for what should go in the park. That will continue until the...

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A bell believed to have belonged to the ‘Santa Mara’, the largest of the three ships of the voyage of discovery of America in 1492, to be put up for sale at a private auction at Miami (USA) by the Italian ex-sailor and diver Roberto Mazzara. In a statement released Monday, Mazzara, who found the bell in 1994 on the north coast of Portugal and has k...

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